As part of the regular BBC Radio 3 programme Open Ear, we perform the London premiere of Ayre: Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of by Chaya Czernowin next two Clara Iannotta’sThe people here go mad, they blame the wind and Mirela Ivičević’sBaby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy – one of our 2017 Call for Scores commissions.

As part of hcmf//’s 40th Anniversary Festival, we’re bringing two Pauline Oliveros pieces to their closing weekend ‘mix-tape’. We continue our ongoing interpretations of Pauline’s text scores, with Sarah Dacey’s performance of The autobiography of Lady Steinway (which we gave the UK premiere of earlier this year) alongside one of Pauline’s most rarely performed pieces: The Wheel of Time, for string quartet and tape. We tracked down the tape part via the Kronos Quartet, and we’re really grateful to them for sharing the performance material with us for this performance!

This concert is produced as part of the Arts Council England International Showcase.

We’re hugely excited to return to hcmf// for the 40th Anniversary Festival with a programme exploring gender and identity in 2017. Laurence Osborn’sCtrl – (commissioned with funding from the Arts Council and PRSF) written on the theme of the crisis of masculinity and the persistence of outdated and oppressive notions of manliness, as highlighted in the writing of Grayson Perry – is placed alongside searing and searching works by Katherine Young, Nikolet Burzynska (a joint Riot Ensemble and HCMF commission via our 2017 Call for Scores) and Stephanie Haensler.

Our 2017 Call for Scores – which received 279 applications from all over the world has resulted in seven commissions for composers from France, Croatia, Poland, England, the United States, and South Korea. Read more over on our composers page.